Ramblings of an Emergency Physician in Texas

Day 8 of the New Interns

For the first time in my career, I wanted to smack the SHIT out of a doctor today.

Okay, there are times when slow torture, stoning, sabotage and just plain evilness have danced in my fantasies in relation to physicians, but this was just an out and out violent impulse. If she would have been within eyesight I probably would have been fired (or jailed).

Read the rest to see what brought this on.

Unsolicited advice to the offending intern: start planning to change residencies as an R2 now. Trust me, the next 4 years, 357 days will make you wish you were dead.

Comments

Ahh, brings back bad memories of “cleaning up” after interns when I worked as an inpatient NP. For some reason the surgical interns did tend to be more arrogant and inconsiderate than medicine interns – always amazed me given how little they knew.
Makes me very appreciative of the fact that I now work with fellows. So far, in 8 days, the biggest challenge has been reviewing the computerized med order system with a first year fellow who hasn’t been at the VA in 2 years.

As my old chairman used to say about surgeons, “not always right, but never in doubt.”

I always found it a riot to be lectured about why it COULDN’T be appendicitis, because the patient either wasn’t the right age, didn’t have an elevated white count, had a few white cells in the urine (“this is clearly a UTI!”).

Ah, hell… who am I kidding? I probably pulled the same stuff when I was an intern.